Steer clear of the captains of calamity

A handy tip if ever you find yourself down in the dumps in the morning is to say, ‘Well at least I’m not . . .’ You then insert the name of someone in the world who is worse off than yourself.

I find it works a treat. Last year, I was particularly cheered up by not being that lady who was filmed putting a cat in a dustbin.

More recently I have been delighted not to be the couple who were kidnapped by Somali pirates, or the owner of the dog Fenton, or the Republican candidate who dried up on television when asked to name the departments he was proposing to abolish. I was also pleased not to be just about any resident of North Korea.

Well at least I'm not...Francesco Schettino, the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, who has overtaken the evil Captain Hook as the most dastardly captain of them all

Last week, I was overjoyed not to be the member of the audience whose phone went off towards the end of Mahler’s 9th in New York, causing the conductor to bring the whole performance to a halt. And if ever I am at my wit’s end to think of anyone worse off than me, there’s always Lembit Opik to fall back on.

I mention this little game because for the past few days I have been thrilled to bits that I am not Captain Francesco Schettino, whose recent cruise cannot, in all honesty, be judged a huge success.

One moment this 52-year-old man was swaggering around in his gold braid, smoothly welcoming the creme de la creme of passengers on the Costa Concordia to his captain’s table. The next moment, he was universally known as Captain Coward, the most hated man in Italy and quite possibly the world.

So far, his defence has been threadbare, to say the least. Apparently, he maintains that he did not really mean to abandon ship, but accidentally slipped and fell, as luck would have it, into a passing lifeboat. Once on dry land, he seems to have suffered a second and similar accident, accidentally falling into a passing taxi, before directing the driver to: ‘Get me as far away from here as possible.’

I imagine the first action of the shipping company, Costa Cruises, will be to get on the phone to a re-branding company. Costa Cruises was always a dud name, even before the accident. Cruises are already prohibitively expensive, so there was never any point in drawing attention to it.

I suspect the Costa re-branding should go further, and take in the title of ‘captain’ too. Of all the seafaring titles, captain is surely the naffest, and suffers from a long line of discredited holders. Take Captain Birdseye, for instance, with his silly grin and frothy white beard, sitting back in comfort on his rowing boat, happy to let a group of ten-year-olds do all the heavy rowing.

The popular image of the naval captain is not helped by the example of Captain Haddock, always my least favourite character in the Tintin books, with his boorish cries of ‘Billions of blue blistering barnacles!’ and his infinite capacity for tripping over.

Nor was it ever satisfactorily explained how Haddock came to afford such a desirable property as Marlinspike Hall, complete with a liveried butler. If I were the purser on his old ship, I would be tempted to perform a quick stock-take of the silver.

Captain Pugwash is almost as bad. He, too, has his irritating catchphrases (‘Plundering Porpoises!’ ‘Jumping Jellyfish!’) and lacks any form of leadership skills. He is also far too plump and rusty-jointed to be any use in a shipwreck.

Other fictitious captains serve only to perpetuate the stereotype of oafishness and skulduggery. In Treasure Island, Long John Silver is a grotesque, murderous and money-grubbing captain, ‘with a face as big as a ham’.

Captain Hook: The perfect example of why the term 'captain' should be phased out

Until the entrance of Captain Schettino, the most dastardly of them all was, of course, Captain Hook. There’s no one quite so vindictive as an Old Etonian with a grievance, and Captain Hook certainly took the biscuit, always hell-bent on making even little children walk the gang-plank.

It’s a sad fact that all the most famous real-life captains tend to be associated with disasters. Captain Scott froze to death; Captain Bligh was the victim of a mutiny, and found himself set adrift on an open boat.

Later in life, as Governor of New South Wales, he was subject to a second mutiny, which suggests he couldn’t help rubbing people up the wrong way. Similarly, Captain Kidd began his naval career on the straight and narrow, but came to a sticky end, hanged for piracy and murder.

At least Captain Smith of the Titanic elected to go down with his ship.

Had he not done so, he would certainly have faced the sort of opprobrium that is now being meted out to Captain Schettino.

The title of captain simply cannot withstand such a prolonged onslaught.

Over the next few years, it should be phased out, and replaced with something more sunny and forward-looking. Meanwhile, my advice to Captain Schettino is to think of someone worse off. But who?